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Provantage is taking orders for Opteron X12 6100 series chips that run at clock speeds between 1.7GHz and 2.4GHz. The chips have 12 cores, with 16MB or 18MB of cache, and draw between 65 watts and 105 watts of power.

Prices on the chips range from $293 to $1,491. The most expensive chip is the Opteron X12 6176 SE processor, which has 2.3GHz, has 18MB of cache and draws 105 watts of power.

Provantage has has 80-watt Opteron X12 6100 processors including the 6174 processor, which runs at 2.2GHz, and the 6172 processor, which runs at 2.1GHz. These chips have 18MB of cache and will set you back $1,250 and $1,060.

Other 80-watt chips include the 6136, which runs at 2.4GHz and is priced at around $800.

The site also lists one 65-watt processor, the $560 Opteron X12 6128, which runs at 2.0GHz and has 16MB of cache. A more power-hungry version of the Opteron X12 6128 draws 80 watts and is priced at $292.

Magny-Cours uses twice as many cores as the flagship Istanbul chips and aim at two-socket and four-socket processors. AMD said its cunning plan is to put four memory channels per processor, which would help move data between memory and the CPU faster.

Putting more cores on the processor should mean faster servers. That could help in energy savings and consolidation of data centers by reducing the number of servers required to perform a set of tasks.

AMD has managed to keep its Magny-Cours details under wraps until now. However it has started shipping Magny-Cours processors to server manufacturers, which will be announcing products as early as next week. This is the traditional time that information leaks like a sieve.

Meanwhile AMD has been trying to drum up interest ahead of next week's official launch.

It has even had a contest offering prizes valued at $8,189 to the person who best describes in an essay, video or blog post how to use 48 cores in a server. You can win four Opteron processors running at 2.2GHz.

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I sincerely doubt the accuracy of the data on that website. Let me summarise my reasons:

- It states that there would be 4 Mb L2 cache for a 12 core processor. That would mean each core has 341 and a third Kb L2 cache, which is a very unlikely number. I believe it's either 256 or 512 Kb per core.- The eight core variety isn't even mentioned, while I believe a little under half the models are of this kind. On top of that, several cheaper models have a higher frequency than more expensive ones... Hmm.- If I recall correctly, it's said that the top TDP would be 115W, not 105.- $292 is a stupendously low amount for a twelve core - that being for an eight core one would make more sense, but even that is ridiculously cheap. Has AMD gone mad?

So I guess most of it is due to them mixing up eight and twelve cores. In spite of this, if the prices are right, AMD is offering down right bargains... At any rate, it should be clear that one shouldn't blindly believe what shops say.

thomasxstewart - 23 Mar 13:04

Purse.on.alley, think Anos is chattering about how jealous is. In $$$ Kabootee'. There are reasons AMD is doing 3,6,12, called Modules, where 2 cores are controlled by seperate controller core. Latest thangee' Lets thinq $1,409 x 4. Well, in Biz, NOT anywhere so , price set to be highly discounted. Public need not worry ecrap sell 'Em over List, Enginnered defective by wide margin & not warrenteed.